This is the first official meal we’ve had for One Local Summer. It was actually more of a challenge than I imagined. Rice? No. Pasta? We could get locally made, but the ingredients wouldn’t have been local.  Thanks to Gideon, though, we had dinner: made from a recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone called “Cottage Cheese and Spinach Gratin.”

The recipe calls for spinach, eggs, chopped parsley, dill seeds, ground coriander, cottage cheese, salt and pepper. Gideon added swiss chard and mushrooms to the mix. We also had some lettuce with salad turnips (shown in the picture before any dressing.) The spinach, eggs, parsley, lettuce, and salad turnips were from our farm share. The swiss chard was from our own garden. The mushrooms were grown somewhere in Oregon, the cottage cheese made in Eugene, Oregon — which is just about 100 miles away. The non-local ingredients were the dill seeds, coriander, salt, pepper, oil & vinegar. (It won’t be too long before we have our own dill seeds from the garden, though… )

After dinner we watched How to Cook Your Life — a Cooking Class with Zen Priest and Chef Edward Espe Brown. The trailer is on YouTube here. I recommend the movie, especially if you have any interest in Buddhism, or if you have enjoyed any of the Tassajara cookbooks.

Tags: one local summer